“Documentary film is the freest way of making cinema” with a courageous and tenacious gaze over the years, she has recounted the most uncomfortable and forgotten face of Italy: the life of the ‘last’.
On the occasion of the exhibition Tutto è santo (Everything is Sacred), a tribute to Cecilia Mangini (Mola di Bari, 1927 – Rome, 2021) and her free and militant cinema, which initially grew up alongside Pasolini, who shot his first documentaries with her. Mangini sought him out and involved him in the making of Stendalì – Suonano ancora and La canta delle marane, the former dedicated to the director’s beloved Puglia and the latter to the existence of those living on the margins of society to whom Pasolini gave a face. Starting from their early collaborations, the exhibition brings together over forty works by Mangini, some of which were made with director and husband, Lino Del Fra.
Director, screenwriter and photographer Cecilia Mangini was the first Italian documentary filmmaker since the Second World War. She recounts the lives of those excluded from modernity and wealth, in the suburbs, in the Mezzogiorno, the denied rights and exploitation of workers, taboos on love and the family, and the difficulty of ‘being women’ between the desire for emancipation and social expectations.
From the end of the 1950s until her death, she never lowered her gaze, continuing to capture with her camera the nuances and contradictions of a country that is changing and does not know how to change amidst ancient traditions that remain, fade away, leave room for new rituals and habits born in the economic boom of the 1960s.
header: FACCE, Rutigliano,1956, ph. Cecilia Mangini, Courtesy OfficinaVisioni, Archivio Cinema del reale
“Documentary film is the freest way of making cinema” with a courageous and tenacious gaze over the years, she has recounted the most uncomfortable and forgotten face of Italy: the life of the ‘last’.
On the occasion of the exhibition Tutto è santo (Everything is Sacred), a tribute to Cecilia Mangini (Mola di Bari, 1927 – Rome, 2021) and her free and militant cinema, which initially grew up alongside Pasolini, who shot his first documentaries with her. Mangini sought him out and involved him in the making of Stendalì – Suonano ancora and La canta delle marane, the former dedicated to the director’s beloved Puglia and the latter to the existence of those living on the margins of society to whom Pasolini gave a face. Starting from their early collaborations, the exhibition brings together over forty works by Mangini, some of which were made with director and husband, Lino Del Fra.
Director, screenwriter and photographer Cecilia Mangini was the first Italian documentary filmmaker since the Second World War. She recounts the lives of those excluded from modernity and wealth, in the suburbs, in the Mezzogiorno, the denied rights and exploitation of workers, taboos on love and the family, and the difficulty of ‘being women’ between the desire for emancipation and social expectations.
From the end of the 1950s until her death, she never lowered her gaze, continuing to capture with her camera the nuances and contradictions of a country that is changing and does not know how to change amidst ancient traditions that remain, fade away, leave room for new rituals and habits born in the economic boom of the 1960s.
header: FACCE, Rutigliano,1956, ph. Cecilia Mangini, Courtesy OfficinaVisioni, Archivio Cinema del reale
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